US and Japanese Researchers Hold Eighth Cooperative Workshop on Liquefaction
and Lifeline Facilities

Participants at the 8th
U.S.-Japan workshop pose for a group photograph

Tokyo, Japan was the setting of the 8th US-Japan Workshop on Earthquake
Resistant Design of Lifeline Facilities and Countermeasures Against Liquefaction
held on December 16-18, 2002. The workshop was attended by over 25 U.S. and 70
Japanese participants. It was sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, and Technology; National Science Foundation and MCEER.
Professors J.P. Bardet, University of Southern California, M. Hamada, Waseda
University, and T.D. O’Rourke, Cornell University, served jointly as co-chairs
of the event.

There were over 50 presentations and papers prepared for the workshop. Topics
covered included pipeline response and design for permanent ground deformation,
rehabilitation of lifelines, liquefaction hazard mapping, fault rupture effects
on structures, seismic performance of lifelines, characteristics of liquefiable
soils, pile behavior in liquefied ground and ground motion characteristics at
sites subject to liquefaction. There was also a special session on the George E.
Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), with short
presentations by many recipients of Phase I and II NEES awards. The proceedings
of the workshop will be published by MCEER later this year.

The workshop series began in 1988, and since that time, has served as a major
instrument for collaboration and cooperative exchange. Cooperative research
between Japanese and U.S. earthquake engineers has resulted in significant new
findings about liquefaction and its effects on lifeline facilities, assessment
of liquefaction potential, modeling of liquefaction-induced large ground
displacements, performance of lifeline facilities and foundations, dynamic
response of underground structures, and countermeasures and earthquake resistant
design against liquefaction.

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Winter 2002/Spring
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